Medical records and health information; individual financial records; aggregated financial trend data; copyrighted music; public domain art; sports scores; scientific research findings; personal and professional correspondence; police surveillance videos; choreographic notations; architectural designs; discount or loyalty shopping cards; military deployment statistics; metadata in e-mails and tweets; encryption and decryption keys; these and many more categories of information are subject to often conflicting laws of copyright, privacy law, data protection regulations and competing legal regimes drafted to focus on particular types of information. Moreover, information has moved out of the computer. Using RFID chips, physical items increasingly broadcast information about their whereabouts.

This article tracks examples of informatics projects in the public and private sector to determine the primary public policy priorities to be fostered by the regulatory regime, including copyright, privacy interests, data ownership rules and data integrity policies to foster reliability, integrity and accuracy.